Western Georgia: Imereti, Racha and the other qvevri

Most wine tours of Georgia go east to Kakheti and stop there. This one goes the other way. Imereti, the country around Kutaisi in western Georgia, buries its qvevri in the garden rather than under a cellar floor, calls them churi, and puts back only a fraction of the skins, so its amber wines are paler and its Tsitska and Tsolikouri keep their acid. Up the Rioni from there, Racha makes Khvanchkara, a semi-sweet red from Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli that cold mountain autumns stopped fermenting long before anyone owned a chiller. I built this route around those two ideas, a natural grower’s garden table and a classic house’s steel, and the lighter, walnut-led cooking of the west. If you want Saperavi and Sighnaghi, the Kakheti route is for you; this is the other half of the story.

Day 1: Kutaisi#

Arrival day. Wizz Air lands at Kutaisi from Prague and Vienna in about three and a half hours, and the airport is twenty-five minutes from the centre; my driver meets each flight. We stay three nights in a small hotel near the Rioni, below Bagrati cathedral on its hill. At 18:00, for anyone already here, a walk up to Bagrati for the view over the river and the roofs, then dinner at 19:30: Imeruli khachapuri, the plain round one with the cheese inside, pkhali of spinach and beetroot bound with walnut, trout, and a dry Tsitska-Tsolikouri from Terjola, so you know the local white before you meet the people who make it. An early night. The west runs slower than Tbilisi and we can afford to match it.

Day 2: Nakhshirghele and the garden of Ramaz Nikoladze#

Thirty minutes east to Nakhshirghele, a village in Terjola at 197 metres. Ramaz Nikoladze farms a hectare and a half of Tsitska, Tsolikouri and Dzelshavi on moist clay, vines of ten to fifty years, farmed organically, and has bottled since 2007 on his grandparents’ parcel. His qvevri are buried under a tree in the garden, and lunch is at a table under the same tree. The method is the Imeretian one taken further: the juice ferments with only 5 to 20 percent of the skins, seeds and stems returned, four to six months in clay, then steel, nothing added and no sulfur. Taste the Tsitska: green apple, salt, a light grip at the end. Then Dzvelshavi, 70 percent Dzelshavi with Tsolikouri, a pale red for drinking cool. Ramaz heads Slow Food in Georgia; lunch follows that logic. We return by Gelati, the monastery David the Builder founded in 1106, twenty minutes above Kutaisi. Dinner is free tonight.

Day 3: Obcha and the Abuladze sisters#

The Kutaisi market first, at 09:00, for churchkhela, fresh Imeretian cheese and a bottle of tkemali, then forty minutes south into the Baghdati hills to Obcha at 324 metres. Baia Abuladze started her label here in 2015, in her early twenties, on her parents’ vines. Her sister Gvantsa, who studied biodynamic winemaking in the Mosel, makes the reds under her own name from the same cellar. About 2.8 hectares, no pesticides or fertilisers, and the churi tradition of the village: whites with a fraction of the skins in the Imeretian way, reds fermented on their skins in clay. Baia’s Krakhuna is the fuller amber, dried pear and beeswax with a chalky finish. Gvantsa’s Otskhanuri Sapere is very dark, high acid, black cherry and violets at moderate alcohol. Dinner is at the family table in Obcha: lobio, aubergine rolls with walnut, khachapuri from the oven. Back in Kutaisi by 22:00.

Day 4: Over the pass into Racha#

At 09:00 we climb north-east through Tkibuli and over the Nakerala pass to Nikortsminda, an 11th-century cathedral known for its carved stone; twenty minutes there. Ambrolauri, 550 metres on the upper Rioni, is half an hour on. Racha gets over a metre of rain a year and cold autumn nights, which is why late-picked Aleksandrouli and Mujuretuli historically stopped fermenting with sugar left, at 10.5 to 12 percent alcohol. It was Kipiani’s wine in the 1870s and became Khvanchkara in the Soviet years. Royal Khvanchkara, founded in 2015 with 18 hectares, steel, oak and a few qvevri, is our classic pole: Khvanchkara, dark ruby, raspberry, velvet, and a dry Aleksandrouli beside it. After lunch, ten kilometres to Khvanchkara and Bugeuli, two family cellars where ancestral qvevri and a cold room do the stopping. A family guesthouse in Ambrolauri; dinner of Rachuli lori, the smoked ham, lobiani with bacon and shkmeruli, chicken in garlic and milk.

Day 5: Barakoni, then the road to Tbilisi#

The driving day. At 08:30, ten minutes east to Tsesi, where the church of Barakoni, built in 1753, stands above a bend of the Rioni with vines on the far bank; the light is best early. Then back over the pass to Kutaisi, an hour and a half, a quick lunch there, and east on the Tbilisi road. Roadworks on the Rikoti pass keep adding time; count on four hours from Kutaisi, with a stop at Surami, where roadside stalls sell nazuki, a sweet spiced bread straight from the oven. Tbilisi by about 17:30: a hotel in Sololaki, a shower, then a glass at Vino Underground, the bar that qvevri growers, Ramaz among them, opened in 2012. At 20:00 the farewell supra with a tamada: satsivi, khinkali, a Tvishi, the semi-sweet Tsolikouri from lower down the Rioni, and the wines of the week again from Tsitska to Khvanchkara, dry to sweet, so you can hear yourself decide.

Day 6: Tbilisi#

Breakfast late. Transfers to Tbilisi airport, half an hour from Sololaki, run to your flights; Austrian Airlines and Georgian Airways fly non-stop to Vienna in under four hours. With a free morning there is the Dry Bridge market, the sulfur baths in Abanotubani, or the Georgian National Museum. The estates on this route sell at the door, and I will ask each about shipping; if you carry, wrap the bottles in a jumper in checked luggage, and treat a Khvanchkara at 11 percent and 30 to 50 grams of sugar as a wine for churchkhela on a cold evening, not for a picnic. You leave knowing that Georgian wine is not one thing: two clays, two schools, two halves of a country, and an opinion on which half you preferred.

Who this tour is for#

For people who have done Kakheti, or who suspect the best-known thing is rarely the whole story. For eaters: the western table is lighter, greener and more walnut than the east, and we sit at it every day. For anyone curious what changes when a grower puts back a fifth of the skins instead of all of them, which I go into in qvevri, karas and amphora, and how that compares with up to six months on full skins at Pheasant’s Tears. The pace is easy; the only long day is the fifth. For both halves of Georgia in one trip, or your own dates and group, see private tours; practical questions are answered in the FAQ.

Practical notes#

Fly into Kutaisi (KUT): Wizz Air non-stop from Prague and Vienna, about three and a half hours, seasonal and roughly three times a week, so the departure dates are set to match. Fly home from Tbilisi (TBS), or I can arrange a transfer back to Kutaisi at cost if your ticket is a return. EU passports and national ID cards enter Georgia visa-free. Lari; cards in towns, cash in villages.

June in Kutaisi is warm and humid, high twenties, with afternoon showers; Racha is cooler at night. The October group finds Racha in the middle of picking and Imereti a week or two from it, days around 20 °C, mountain nights cold, and early snow can close the Nakerala pass after mid-October, in which case we go round by the Rioni gorge. Pack a rain jacket, shoes for wet grass and village lanes, and something warm for cellars and Racha evenings. Walking is short; the churches have steps.